Brief on AWS IAM

IAM in Nutshell

  • Identity Access Management
  • Web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources
  • Allows to assign permission to group of users
  • Integrates well with Active Directory
  • Access auditing using CloudTrail to monitor the activties of any account/group

How IAM Works ?

4 key concepts :

  • Users : Indicates specific individuals
  • Group : Set or collection of users
  • Roles : Set or collection of policies (s3 read / s3 write)
  • Policies : Low level permission to resources (dey/allow)

Best practices

  • Use Least Priviledge model : Tightens Security and avoids unnecesaary issues (like loss of data , table ,etc)
  • Be vigilant while changing policies : Tightens Security

User Accessing AWS resources using IAM

More details are here

Example of S3 Read policy

{
  "Id": "Policy123455678",
  "Version": "2012-10-19",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Sid": "Stmt1889900011111",
      "Action": [
        "s3:GetObject"
      ],
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::debaditya.com",
      "Principal": "*"
    }
  ]
}